Special message from SANCCOB’s Chief Executive Officer

I hope you are well and some of you are already enjoying the festive season.

Over the past few years this is notably the busiest time of the year for SANCCOB, with hundreds of African penguins and other seabirds being admitted for rehabilitation.

It is so busy that we schedule two post-rehabilitation releases per week. It’s always a wonderful sight to see the birds returning to the wild after spending time recuperating at SANCCOB.

2017 has been a year of substantial development for our organisation. We expanded our footprint in the Eastern Cape when Trustees of the South African Marine Rehabilitation and Education Centre (SAMREC) in Port Elisabeth handed their facilities and operations over to SANCCOB. This facility is ideally placed to cater for the seabird rehabilitation requirements of the region. Due to the collapse of the penguin population on the West Coast of South Africa, the Eastern Cape is now home to just over 50% of the African penguin population making it a critical conservation area.

Construction of our new seabird hospital in Cape Town started in 2017 and is almost 80% complete. We hope to take occupation in the first few months of next yea and enjoy the new facilities after years of running the hospital out of a prefabricated building which was purchased second hand in 1983.

Next year is going to be a milestone year for SANCCOB as we will be celebrating our 50-year anniversary. Thank you for your continued support to help us uphold our vision to end seabird extinction. We certainly couldn’t do it without you and greatly appreciate that you choose SANCCOB as the beneficiary of your goodwill. It’s not only the financial contributions that enable our work but also donated or sponsored equipment and supplies needed to carry out daily operations, which we receive from individuals and corporates – Thank you!

The
Southern African Foundation for the Conservation
of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) is a registered non-profit organisation (NPO 003-134) whose primary objective is to reverse the decline of seabird populations through the rescue, rehabilitation and release of ill, injured, abandoned and oiled seabirds. We are also registered with the American Fund for Charities.